


To know fear is to be alive

by Skavvie



Series: Musings and One Shots [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gem War, Introspection, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Renegade Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skavvie/pseuds/Skavvie
Summary: Five thousand years of fighting left its mark on all of them especially Pearl. This story examines the methods she used to cope with the war and the lingering effects.





	To know fear is to be alive

**Author's Note:**

> Pearl is one of my favorite characters on the show. Initially I wanted to write up a short bit of head cannon about her more neurotic tendencies. The fic kind of got away from me.

War is not the place for emotions, not unless you're looking to slip up and get yourself shattered. The battlefield is an epicenter of whirling chaos that can easily consume anyone who isn't careful. Things like fear or anger make a gem lose sight of their training and that causes mistakes. Worrying about potential consequences can make a gem forget about what's going on in the moment. Sympathy was a luxury you couldn't afford when your former ally was charging you down axe raised. Swearing an oath of revenge made one less likely to retreat if the tides of battle turned. In battle a warrior must be as cold as the blade of their weapon and as firm as the ground they stand on. Loyalty could only exist between a soldier and their diamond; your sole worth was measured in your service to The Authority. 

That kind of heartless thinking is easy for warrior gems like quartzs to follow. They literally come out of the ground ready to lay their life on the line without a second thought. Any quartz who exhibited hesitation, even for a second, was shattered on the spot lest they corrupt the rest of their unit. One second of doubt was enough time for an enemy to shatter you into millions of glittering shards. It was easy in the time before the rebellion, when the only thing they were fights were drooling organics. Thanks to Rose Quartz and her stupid uprising it was suddenly hole mate against hole mate. Killing a howling alien on some dirt planet was one thing, it was just another day. It was something else entirely to stare into the shards of someone who emerged from the space next to you. 

For gems not designed for combat it was much harder for them to understand why feeling was wrong. Rubies would rush head first into battle screaming obscenities and swearing to avenge their fallen comrades. Pearl tried time and time again to warn her troops about the dangers of getting attached to their squad mates. She had seen so many friends ground to dust and held a sobbing Rose so many times that she knew distance was the only way to keep sane. They called her a monster for it, "We're here risking our gems defying the diamonds and you're spouting off rhetoric like some mindless agate." Some even went so far as to question if a servile gem like a pearl was even capable of feeling. The terrifying renegade pearl who could shatter three amethysts before they could draw their weapons. Rather than carry a wounded gem off the field she would poof them without a second thought. Rumor had it that if the light caught her right after a battle she would sparkle with the dust of the enemy. 

Meditation gave her the strength to disassociate from what was happening during the chaos of war. Discipline let her will away the screams of the dying as easily as she walked. All that made her a person was buried deep in the back of her mind where she could shut it off for a time. For a period of time Pearl was gone, replaced by an unfeeling renegade whose only priority was winning. Any Homeworld gem lucky enough to survive an encounter with her told stories of empty blue eyes. Agate trainers used her as a sort of bogey man painting her as a gleaming specter of death to anyone who didn't do as they were trained. Propaganda machines cranked out public service announcements about the dangers of giving one's pearl complex orders. "It destroys their delicate programming rendering them to little better than beasts." 

What the others didn't see was the way the fearsome renegade would tremble after the dust settled. They couldn't feel the way her artificial stomach churned and spasmed trying to void contents it didn't possess. Fresh faced recruits wouldn't sing her praises if they knew how hard it was to bring herself back each time. No they would run and hide if they discovered how tempted she was to let the renegade consume her. Rose Quartz herself would be appalled if she ever found out how much the lithe gem was coming to enjoy snuffing out a life. Bismuth was passionate about the war because of everything Homeworld had taken from her. To her shattering was justified because of how many of their own had suffered the same fate. Pearl felt no passion when she slid the point of her spear past the slight resistance of another being's gem. Nestled in the protective confines of her own psyche all Pearl was able to see was her final objective; victory. Other gems on either side of the conflict were no more alive than the holo pearls she was able to project.

Disassociation wasn't without its side effects of course even for someone as mentally strong as Pearl. They were little things at first, things that while strange could easily be explained away. While many Crystal Gems had taken to the organic past time of sleeping Pearl refused to rest. If she wasn't actively engaged in combat she was scouting, or training recruits, or helping to plan their next strike. Idleness brought with it the horrific memories of things she had done in the name of the rebellion. Prolonged quiet gave way to the echo of screams that she knew would be burned into her until the day she was shattered. Sleep was the worst because she had no active control over her thoughts and would project them for anyone to see. Should anyone ask why she wasn't taking a break Pearl would chastise them for wasting time when they were in the middle of a war. 

After nearly a hundred years of constant fighting Pearl started becoming obsessed with keeping order. Pearls were designed to act as courtiers and secretaries so it was assumed that this was her re-purposing her programming. Resources were meticulously cataloged as they came into camp regardless of their significance. Garnet once had to drag an irate Pearl away from a group of rubies who failed to tell her they collected three pieces of a broken carnelian. It was no better when their resources were living troops that threw off the shackles of the diamonds to join the Gem's cause. Pearl would number the new soldiers as they came in almost single-handedly ruining Rose's promise of individuality. Once again it was Garnet to the rescue convincing the other gem to keep her numbering system to herself. It wasn't a perfect solution but it did its part to keep the peace around camp. 

It wasn't until centuries after the final battle that Pearl's bottled up feelings caught up with her in a noticeable way. She and Rose were at an old battlefield assisting a human tribe by collecting discarded gem weapons. Her foot scraped over something rigid and she looked down at a small orange shard sticking out of the mud. Like one of those magic eye puzzles once she saw one shard it the rest of them revealed themselves to her. The ground sparkled with hundreds of lost lives, their gems broken beyond recognition. Pounding rain had turned the field into a muddy oceanic graveyard that gleamed in the sunlight. In a blink she was back in the war standing firm as a squad of Homeworld quartzs rushed her down. Jaspers, easily a head and shoulders taller than the pale gem, howled their battle cries. Raw terror filled every photon of her being overwhelming her senses without the protective detachment of the renegade. Her ears filled with the anguished shouts of the dying and the wounded begging to be poofed. The choking stench of smoke from Homeworld's mortars burned her nostrils raw just as they had centuries prior. 

Large hands gripped her shoulders and she panicked drawing her weapon to lash out at the threat. In an instant Pearl's glowing orange enemies were replaced by Rose Quartz. Pearl's spear was aimed at her, the tip pressed against Rose's projected shield. For a handful of tense heartbeats the ex soldier couldn't recognize the gem in front of her. Rose's dark eyes, normally filled with warmth, were wide with dread and her voice shook when she spoke, "Pearl? Put the spear down Pearl I'm not going to hurt you unless I have to but you need to put your weapon down." The spear was unsummoned in a glittering flash of light leaving the two gems staring awkwardly at each other. Before the larger of the two could demand an explanation Pearl fled back to the warp pad and vanished. When she reappeared at their temple home a week later no one asked where she had been. 

Garnet's presence, and by extension becoming Sardonx, was a soothing warmth that the nervous gem could anchor herself to. The fusion was like an unshakable wall; Pearl deeply envied her confidence. Having a sense of what could happen helped keep her from falling into the vast well of fear she had been repressing. Yes she still flinched at unexpected stimuli but as long as she didn't sleep she was able to keep her flashbacks at bay. Amethyst's bold entrance into their lives gave her an outlet for her pent up energy. In time the four gems fell into a routine that provided Pearl the stability she needed to thrive.

Rose's death completely destroyed that feeling of harmony sending Pearl spiraling back into depression. Steven was almost a month old before she could be coaxed out of her room to meet him. Playful jabs at Amethyst's hoarding tendencies morphed into drawn out arguments that lasted days. From there Pearl would find any flaw she could in her purple companion and pick at it until the younger quartz stormed off. Order was obsessively maintained around the human areas of the temple to the point that anything out of place was destroyed. All aspects of human life had to be studied in depth so she could protect her new charge from anything. The discovery of invisible threats like germs threw Pearl into a frantic burst of cleaning that only stopped when Garnet forbade her from buying more bleach. She knew her actions were hurting those around her but she couldn't seem to stop. 

War was funny like that, no matter how long ago it happened that scars still felt fresh. Simple things like the smell of food burning could bring back memories of enemy artillery. Seeing humans wearing bits of jewelry were enough to make her nonexistent heart ache for the dead. Pearl couldn't bring herself to talk about it with the others; doing that would force her to admit what she had done. Actions that felt completely justified in the heat of battle now seemed sadistic. Steven, sweet innocent Steven, would never forgive her if he knew how many shards were on her hands. On her lowest days she wondered if she was any better than The Diamond Authority. The whole idea of the greater good was excellent in theory but it did little to comfort her on nights where her thoughts were consumed by the dead.


End file.
